The largest humanitarian crisis since 1945. - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14787996
Frollein wrote:Pro tip: don't pop out more babies than you can feed.

This is what "development aid" looks like: milk powder and clinics, but no contraceptives.

Sterilize 80% of them, that should take care of the problem. Bonus: no hordes of Africans making their way to Europe.


Frollibean

60 Minutes covered this last night, on S Sudan. Thousands of people with their ration cards stood on swampy grounds. Women with big families had taken in their brothers and sisters and, in some cases, friends children when the parents were murdered.

There wasnt a pharmacy in sight. Not even a condom vending machine. Just mud.
#14788000
mikema63 wrote:Human beings suck, this is more or less a perfect example of humanity in the world.


It's certainly an example of what can happen when human beings believe in the hubris that their empathy can have universal reach. The end result is that white guilt and post-colonial subjugation become two sides of the same coin.

Do not feel a single thing for those who starve in distant lands. These feelings are spectres that have been outpaced by Man's own ascent. As Kierkegaard observed, it is impossible to reconcile the neighbour unto ourselves. You could literally drive yourself mad trying to empathize with the rest of the world. That is a burden for the perpetual sorrow of Our Lady.

Eat, drink, and be merry if God so wills it.
#14788009
Stormsmith wrote:Frollibean

60 Minutes covered this last night, on S Sudan. Thousands of people with their ration cards stood on swampy grounds. Women with big families had taken in their brothers and sisters and, in some cases, friends children when the parents were murdered.

There wasnt a pharmacy in sight. Not even a condom vending machine. Just mud.


Thank you for confirming my point about "development aid." Perhaps you should go back and read Pote's first post. He was saying essentially the same, just used more words.
#14788026
I read it previously. My point isn't about development aid. It's about murder, about gang rape as a weapon of war, reasons why it appears to be sexual irresponsibility.
#14788039
Stormsmith wrote:I read it previously. My point isn't about development aid. It's about murder, about gang rape as a weapon of war, reasons why it appears to be sexual irresponsibility.


:eh: That's not restricted to Africa. My point is that over 60 billion dollars of developmental aid later, the continent is still a shithole, and now it's releasing it onto our shores. I guess it's easy to be a humanitarian with the Atlantic between you and them.
#14788040
Frollein wrote::eh: That's not restricted to Africa. My point is that over 60 billion dollars of developmental aid later, the continent is still a shithole, and now it's releasing it onto our shores. I guess it's easy to be a humanitarian with the Atlantic between you and them.


This is from yesterday


#14788097
Suntzu wrote:Starving men have no sex drive. Starving women do not ovulate and can't conceive. A women continues to lactate until she just about starves to death. In Africa the men eat first, then the women. If anything is left the children are fed.

Citation needed

Rugoz wrote:The typical antiquated resource-centric and zero sum view of economics. You realize total natural resource rents made up ~1.7% of world GDP in 2015?

The foundations of my building make up 0% of the living space and 0% of the rental income. They're still essential, though.
#14788144
Donald wrote:It's certainly an example of what can happen when human beings believe in the hubris that their empathy can have universal reach. The end result is that white guilt and post-colonial subjugation become two sides of the same coin.

Do not feel a single thing for those who starve in distant lands. These feelings are spectres that have been outpaced by Man's own ascent. As Kierkegaard observed, it is impossible to reconcile the neighbour unto ourselves. You could literally drive yourself mad trying to empathize with the rest of the world. That is a burden for the perpetual sorrow of Our Lady.

Eat, drink, and be merry if God so wills it.



You confuse natural empathy with social politically controlled empathy. They're both not the same thing.
#14788193
Potemkin wrote:@Rugoz :

Conflict reources

Let us take coltan as an example. This is a vital resource for the electronics industry, and the overwhelming majority of the world's coltan is located in Africa. Without it, that nifty new iPhone you bought recently wouldn't work. The West must therefore secure access to coltan, by whatever means necessary. Political instability in African nations is therefore undesirable for the West. Giving handouts to the destitute masses of Africa is therefore not an entirely unselfish thing to do.


You like to talk in absolutes. Wiki itself says there are Coltan deposits all around the globe. As for the iPhone not working without it, I'm sure capacitors can be made of other, less optimal materials as well if necessary. It reminds me of the Rare Earths hype and the supposed Chinese monopoly which of course was none.
#14788313
Rugoz wrote:You realize total natural resource rents made up ~1.7% of world GDP in 2015?

I realize such a claim is false and absurd.
(here, highly dependent on the oil price).

That's not total natural resource rents. Total natural resource rents would include location rents, which are around 20% of global GDP.
#14788605
Truth To Power wrote:I realize such a claim is false and absurd.

That's not total natural resource rents. Total natural resource rents would include location rents, which are around 20% of global GDP.


I know you like land a lot (I mean A LOT), but it's irrelevant to our discussion in this thread.

As for the 20%, you mentioned the paper from Rognlie in another thread, have you actually read it? Total US land rents amount to 4% of US GDP (page 42 here). Provide a source for the 20% of global GDP.
#14788738
Rugoz wrote:I know you like land a lot (I mean A LOT),

"Like" it? No, I'm just willing to know facts about it.
but it's irrelevant to our discussion in this thread.

I agree. What you were talking about was perhaps the rents of mineral resources. So that's what you should have said.
As for the 20%, you mentioned the paper from Rognlie in another thread, have you actually read it?

Only part of it. It's pretty long.
Total US land rents amount to 4% of US GDP (page 42 here).

No, that's just an estimate for economic modelling purposes, not an empirical measurement, and is clearly absurdly low. He says 3% of GDP goes for non-residential (i.e., commercial, industrial and agricultural) land, but that is low of the mark. And his 1% of GDP estimate for residential land rent is just nonsense. The total value of residential land is nearly double the value of non-residential land, so even if the 3% figure for non-residential land rent were correct (it's not), residential land rent would have to be at least 5% of GDP. Think about it: he estimates labor's share of GDP (wages) at 60%; but land's share of housing costs is typically over 50% (it is often 80% or more), and people generally pay an average of about 1/3 of their wages for housing (many pay over half). How can residential land account for only 1% of GDP? It's ridiculous. Do the math: .60 x .50 x .33 = .10, not .01.
Provide a source for the 20% of global GDP.

As shown above, it's around 15% in the USA (see also Gaffney, 2009, 'The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare'). Most other countries that account for the majority of global GDP -- China, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, India, Italy, South Korea, etc. -- are much more crowded than the USA, and their land rents are consequently an even higher fraction of GDP.
#14788773
The declaration of famine in two counties of South Sudan last month led to immediate pledges of aid. Grave editorials called on Western governments to prioritise relief efforts to the needy, despite the shortcomings of the government and the ongoing civil war.

But a singular focus on sending more food may miss the mark. That's because in South Sudan's famine zone, more people die from bullets than starvation.

The famine was declared for Mayendit and Leer counties of southern Unity State, an area populated by various clans of the Nuer ethnic group. These clans are politically loyal to Riek Machar, who leads South Sudan's main rebel group, the SPLA-IO, and hails from Leer.

According to a February survey that food security experts analysed as part of the data used to declare famine, 4.1 in 10,000 people died per day across Mayendit county. That’s above the famine threshold of two hunger-related deaths per 10,000 people, which itself is about 10 times the average global death rate.

But 73 percent of those deaths in Mayendit were from conflict, not starvation. That means more than two people per 10,000 died per day – the same catastrophic, out of control death rate of a famine – but the immediate cause was because they had been shot.

Other surveys tell a similar story. In Leer, there's no recent available mortality data, but a survey from February 2016 found that of the more than three people dying per 10,000 per day there, 57 percent were from conflict rather than starvation.

A third study released in December 2016 by REACH, a USAID-funded group, found conflict the leading cause of mortality in Leer and Mayendit, accounting for 49 percent of total deaths.

That means the war in southern Unity is so bad that even amid a famine, violent deaths still outpace starvation deaths.

To be clear, the high rate of conflict deaths does not mean Leer and Mayendit counties are not experiencing famine.

Jason Patinkin

A famine requires, among other factors, that a population experiences two deaths per 10,000 people per day that are “related to hunger”. A violent death can also be “related to hunger” if, for instance, a hungry person ventures into an unsafe area in search of food and is shot, something that has been the case in southern Unity.

But the opposite is even more true. Southern Unity is a lush floodplain, full of fish and arable land. No one would die from hunger there if there wasn't conflict. The war has prevented people from planting, harvesting, fishing, and trading. Just as importantly, the conflict prevents relief workers from bringing enough food aid to reach hungry people.

“With active conflict in these places, it is very difficult for humanitarian assistance to be felt, because even when the food is distributed, sometimes it can be taken away [by armed groups],” explained Barack Kinanga, a food security expert with the International Rescue Committee.

The hunger facing people in southern Unity is not just a byproduct of the war, but the goal, many analysts suggest. Across the country, 5.8 million people are in need of food aid and more than 2.3 million – one in every five people in South Sudan – have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict.

While SPLA-IO rebels have launched attacks (including on civilians), and thrown up barriers to aid, the death by violence and hunger in southern Unity is primarily the result of three scorched-earth campaigns waged by the government army (the SPLA), and its militia allies.

Draining the sea

The first campaign, led by the Justice and Equality Movement, a militia from Sudan's Darfur region that has fought for South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, took place in January 2014.

JEM stormed south from the Unity capital Bentiu and razed Leer, sending civilians and aid workers running for their lives. By the time aid groups returned in May 2014, children were already dying of malnutrition, though no famine was declared.

The next two campaigns were far more devastating. For seven months, beginning in late April 2015, SPLA-backed militia from the Bul and later Jaggey clans of the Nuer wreaked havoc across southern Unity.

Besides mass murder and sexual slavery, the militia torched villages, stole or destroyed grain and crops, looted cattle on an industrial scale, wrecked water points, shelled river ports to disrupt trade in foodstuffs, and either stole or blocked aid deliveries.

The goal was to annihilate the rebels’ support base by creating an “empty area” in central and southern Unity, according to a United Nations Panel of Experts report.

“SPLA armed forces were intent on rendering communal life unviable and prohibiting any return to normalcy following the violence,” the group said.

Nearly 8,000 people died by violence or drowning in the swamps while fleeing attacks in the 2015 campaign, according to a UN mortality study released early last year.

By the end of 2015, some 70,000 people had fled the affected region, mostly to government areas where aid workers were allowed to deliver food. Forty thousand people left behind were classified by the IPC to be in “famine conditions”.

The most recent campaign, from July 2016 and continuing into 2017, finally pushed Mayendit and Leer counties into what the UN and the government now officially describe as a famine.

Jason Patinkin

These attacks were carried out by SPLA-backed militia loyal to Taban Deng Gai, who hails from the Jikany Nuer clan in northeastern Unity state. Since the collapse of a peace and power-sharing deal with rebel leader Machar in 2016 and the return to civil war, the international community has recognised Taban, as he is popularly known, as the First Vice President.

The 2016-2017 campaign appears to have been just as brutal as the one of 2015, including rape, murder, and destruction of villages.

“A whole village would disappear,” said one aid worker, who visited repeatedly in 2016 but IRIN is keeping anonymous for safety reasons. “In your next visit, you'd find just piles of ash.”

As in 2015, soldiers targeted civilians and their livelihoods by stealing cattle, blocking aid, and destroying crops during fighting, which the REACH study said was the largest cause of food insecurity in the state. Destitute people have turned to gathering wild fruits, leaves, and fish to survive, but soldiers block access to even these emergency food sources.

“We found a case [in government-controlled southern Mayendit], the men with guns are basically disallowing anyone from accessing fishing areas,” the aid worker said.

“Pushed and pushed and pushed”

Throughout the chaos, aid groups have undertaken what at times was the largest single-country aid effort on Earth.

In 2014, they started dropping food from planes, which is rarely done. That wasn't enough, so they started “Rapid Response Missions”, where aid workers were helicoptered in to remote areas for one to two weeks at a time, quickly assessed needs, and distributed as much as food and medicine as possible before dropping into the next place. Those missions hadn't been done anywhere, ever.

When government militia started killing civilians who attended the rapid response missions and stealing their food, aid groups covertly handed out “emergency relief kits” – small packages of high-energy biscuits, fishing hooks, water purification tablets, and other lifesavers – by helicopter or canoe to families hiding in the bush.

This was a far cry from meeting the needs of people on the ground, but aid groups continued trying to reach them. Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross kept coming back, even though soldiers looted or destroyed their compounds in Leer four times, including last July.

None of these efforts stopped the violence itself. Even the declaration of famine, the loudest alarm bell the aid world can ring, hasn't resulted in a ceasefire. Just days after the announcement, aid workers were forced to evacuate Mayendit yet again.

“We've pushed and pushed and pushed,” said World Food Programme spokeswoman Challiss McDonough. “But humanitarian assistance can only do so much on its own. It cannot end a conflict.”

For that, the international community needs to mobilise political action.

“This is a conflict-driven famine,” said Nicholas Haan of Singularity University, who led the development of the IPC and is on its independent Emergency Review Committee, which assessed the famine data for South Sudan.

“In addition to stop-gap humanitarian assistance, there needs to be extreme, extraordinary measures to tamp down the conflict in the area, whatever that looks like.”


http://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/0 ... -much-food
#14791179
SolarCross wrote:Sounds like he is asking for a large scale military intervention?

I'm not sure how a Canadian is supposed to feel about starving Yemeni children.

I mean, our PM just approved the sale of 15 billion dollars in armored trucks to Saudi Arabia so that the Saudi army can continue to destroy the lives of people in Yemen. The starvation is a product of our business model.

Perhaps Canadians should channel Madeleine Albright and say, in harmony: "Starving millions of children is worth it!" And then smile their heads off while kite-shopping at the West Edmonton Mall.

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